Oppression will always breed different forms of mobilization and organizing, protest and resistance. Building a historical memory of Puerto Rican str… - Edna Acosta-Belén

The nationalistic sentiments underlying the messages displayed in the Puerto Rican flag, the pinned buttons, T-shirts, and berets of Puerto Rican youth validated the roots and identities of those who had left the island but carried the island in their hearts. The slogans "Tengo Puerto Rico en mi corazón, "I'm Proud to be Puerto Rican," "Puerto Rican Power," "Qué Viva Puerto Rico Libre," "Free Puerto Rico Now," "Despierta Boricua, Defiende lo Tuyo" (Wake up, Boricua, and defend what is yours) and "¡Jíbaros Sí, Yanquis, No!" were proudly and defiantly flaunted throughout the Puerto Rican barrios of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other cities where the Young Lords were making their presence felt.

After all, la lucha continúa (the struggle continues). It is hard to ignore the fact that the civil rights struggles that we were part of during our younger years to eradicate all kinds of inequalities, are being eroded in the present by unleashed backlashes in a US society still afflicted by a widening gap between the poor and the wealthy, and between the white population and rapidly growing populations of color. A swarm of right wing politicians and the corporate capital that controls their political campaigns want to turn back the clock on the most significant changes and accomplishments that came out of the US civil rights movement-whether by enacting legislation to limit or suppress the electoral power of Latinos/as and African Americans, gerrymandering districts to favor white voters, demonizing immigrants and fostering xenophobic, racist, and undemocratic discourses, infringing upon the reproductive rights of women, weakening unions, opposing increases in the minimum wage, curtailing all the government programs that benefit the most needy sectors of US society, diminishing opportunities to climb the socioeconomic ladder and thus shrinking the middle class, refusing to accept the catastrophic effects of climate change, and favoring laws that facilitate and perpetuate an insatiable accumulation of wealth by the white privileged elites and the corporate sector. A complicitous right-wing media only adds fuel to these ideological crusades by propagandizing similar positions, and fostering demagoguery and fearmongering against culturally and racially diverse populations and immigrants.

Predictably, the pattern of relegating women's issues to a secondary position or viewing them as "detracting" or "divisive" to a "greater" cause is by now a deeply rooted cliché. Just as achieving some degree of class and race consciousness is a prerequisite to understanding class and racial oppressions, developing a feminist consciousness is also a precondition for both progressive women and men to comprehend women's sources of oppression, unequal treatment, and diminished presence in historical narratives.